The EU seeks to simplify cookie consent to combat user “consent fatigue,” but easier consent risks weakening privacy protections. Proposals include standardized settings, exemptions, and browser-level consent tools. Reforms must preserve transparency, meaningful choice, and accountability to prevent usability improvements from eroding the EU’s core data protection and user autonomy principles.
In the European Union’s ongoing debate over privacy regulation, one of the most persistent annoyances for both users and businesses is consent fatigue — the sense that after being bombarded with cookie banners and pop-ups, users stop paying attention, reflexively click “accept,” or simply abandon sites.
The European Commission has realized that this is a problem and decided to simplify cookie consent rules in response, aiming to lighten the administrative burden on businesses and reduce friction for consumers.
But is making consent “easier” a step forward — or does it risk undermining the very privacy protections the EU has championed?
“Consent fatigue” refers to the phenomenon where users, overwhelmed by frequent, repetitive consent requests (e.g. cookie banners, tracking pop-ups), stop engaging and assessing the options, they accept defaults and simply click through without thinking it through.
A usability assessment of 191 cookie consent interfaces revealed massive variation in how easy (or hard) it was for users to find and meaningfully exercise privacy options. Another study showed that interface design (position, framing, default options) influenced whether users gave consent — often nudging them toward acceptance.
In short: even when consent is technically granted, it isn’t clear that consent is given freely as an informed choice.
Ironically, stricter legal requirements for consent (such as detailed disclosures or more frequent prompts) may make fatigue worse. Schermer et al. argue that overburdening users with consent demands can lead to “consent desensitisation,” where people stop paying attention altogether.
Similarly, another recent review from the Centre for Information Policy Leadership points out that the requirement to inform individuals of all data processing operations makes consent forms necessarily long and complex — turning them into a burden for individuals rather than a meaningful choice.
Thus consent, in practice, risks becoming a ritual rather clear expressions of consent.
The EU is exploring several possible measures to reduce friction to consent. Below are possible paths and where they could be positive – or not.
One idea is to allow websites to feature simpler consent mechanisms by providing standardized tiers of privacy settings (e.g. “essential only,” “enhanced personalization,” “all tracking”) with clearer defaults. The user would not need to wade through dozens of vendor-level toggles by default, but could expand settings if desired.
Pros:
Reduces cognitive burden and decision fatigue. Many users do not care about granular vendor-level settings; they just want a few broad choices.
Makes consent interfaces more usable and consistent across sites.
Easier implementation for businesses, especially SMEs, which struggle with compliance complexity.
Risks:
Defaults could become de facto “tracking-enabled” if not regulated carefully (i.e. the “default effect” nudges users into consent). Indeed, interface defaults are known to strongly influence user behavior.
A simplified default might mask important distinctions (e.g. between first-party and third-party trackers, profiling vs. analytics, etc.) and reduce users’ visibility on how data flows.
If users rarely expand or refine settings, granular controls would atrophy, weakening oversight and auditability.
Another proposal is to exempt certain types of cookies or data collection (e.g. purely functional or anonymized analytics) from requiring explicit consent. The idea is that not all processing is equally risky.
Pros:
Lowers the regulatory burden for businesses dealing with non-sensitive data.
Removes micro-interruptions for users in cases where the privacy risk is minimal.
Risks:
The line between “non-personal” and “personal” is blurry, especially as re-identification risks grow.
Over time, “exempt” categories could be stretched by industry to include more processing.
Eroding the principle of consent for more cases risks building a sliding scale that gradually weakens privacy rights.
Instead of being asked for consent on every site, users could express overarching preferences (or browser-level settings) that apply across many websites. This could look like a browser-based consent manager, a “consent vault,” like “Do Not Track” (but stronger).
Pros:
Eliminates repetition and enhances user convenience.
Offers users consistency across sites.
Simplifies implementation for businesses: they respond to a user-level signal.
Risks:
Requires interoperability and standardization (technical, regulatory, and business coordination).
Could centralize power: e.g. browsers or big platforms might mediate consent, raising questions of accountability and dark pattern risk.
It’s harder to ensure transparency and updates: if a user sets a global preference at time T, but a site changes its processing later, would re-consent be required?
In some proposals, websites could give users the option to pay for a privacy-respecting version of their service rather than consenting to data processing. This concept is sometimes called “consent or pay.” This has, however, been challenged by various authorities, such as in Austria.
Pros:
Puts an explicit trade-off in front of the user: privacy carries a cost.
Could reduce the number of consent notifications by grouping certain defaults with a “free vs. paid” model.
Risks:
Creates inequity: users with fewer resources may be forced to accept tracking because they cannot pay.
Many privacy advocates and regulators argue such models conflict with consent’s voluntary nature (true consent should not have coercive pressure).
The European Data Protection Board has already flagged many consent-or-pay models as non-compliant.
The real question is not whether to ease consent, but how much and in what form. Some reduction in friction seems justifiable — the status quo is clearly broken. But safeguards are essential if the changes are not to result in privacy rollback.
To preserve the integrity of consent, any reform should incorporate:
Strong default protections: If defaults lean toward personalization/tracking, users may be nudged into privacy loss without noticing. Regulators should mandate that “privacy-protective” defaults be the baseline.
Layered disclosure: even in simplified consent, users should have access to clear, layered information so they can drill down if they wish.
Granularity where needed: especially for high-risk processing (profiling, automated decision-making), finer consent choices must remain available.
Dynamic re-consent triggers: when a service changes materially, users should be re-prompted (or notified) rather than treated as already having consented.
Robust audit, accountability, and penalties: simplified mechanisms are only meaningful if violations are detected and punished.
Safeguards against dark patterns: any UI design that unfairly steers users (“obstruction,” “default bias,” etc.) must be prohibited. Recent experiments show that both dark and “bright” patterns can influence behavior, often in opaque ways. Employing a transparent consent management platform and using it ethically is one step toward making consent meaningful and non-intrusive.
The Trust, Privacy Fatigue, and the Informed Consent Dilemma study (MDPI, 2025) found that fatigue increases mismatch between users’ understanding, emotional responses, and behaviour. That is, users may feel concerned but behave passively due to overload.
The Balancing privacy and usability design science paper (2025) uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to show that usability and perceived ease-of-use are strong determinants of whether users engage meaningfully with consent dialogues.
The MDPI article Data Protection, Cookie Consent, and Prices models a “monetary price for privacy” alternative and finds that under some conditions it could better reflect users’ privacy preferences — but warns that implementation and market dynamics matter hugely.
Multiple user studies (e.g. Machuletz & Böhme, 2019) show that the number of options and default buttons directly affect how many consent requests users grant — often overaccepting when defaults or simpler layouts are used.
Dark and Bright Patterns in Cookie Consent Requests (2025) shows that even when nudges are reversed toward privacy-friendly defaults, many users still consent across the board — so design interventions can only go so far in shaping behavior.
These findings caution that simplifying consent does not guarantee improved privacy — design and regulatory guardrails are equally important.
Users deserve privacy that is usable, not burdensome; businesses need clarity and efficiency, not endless legal overhead. But the path to “easier consent” is narrow: misstep, and the result could be an incremental rolling back of privacy protections.
Reform is justified — but only if guided by strong default protections, enforceable constraints on design, transparency, and continued user agency in granting true consent. Making things simpler should not make consent superficial.
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